Senior sports writer for The Age

Of all the stories told at Wednesday night's Hall Of Fame affair, Ken Henfry's recollection of moving his parents out of their home in their dotage was something of a collector's item. Quite literally.

Ken was born the year after his father Ern returned to Perth after 84 games with Carlton - 82 of them as captain, including the victorious 1947 and not-so glorious 1949 grand finals. Essendon had been the Blues' opponent in both, a poignant coincidence for a man whose West Australian career spanned 28 years with the one club, Perth, which also wears red and black.

Sorting through his parents' wardrobe years later, downsizing for their move in with he and his wife, Ken came across two old football guernseys, black with a red sash. He presumed they were Perth jumpers, wondered why his Dad still had them, and tossed them in the bag of clothes destined for the charity shop.

Dick Reynolds runs out for a grand final with Essendon. Photo: Archives

A few months later, a friend of Ern's from Melbourne rang and told Ken that Dick Reynolds had passed away. Ken had grown up seeing photos of Reynolds and his father, opposing captains in those grand finals, in frames around the house. "They got on very well."

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"This fellow said, 'I know your Dad's got two jumpers of Dick's hanging in the wardrobe, that they swapped after those grand finals. Get them over here, we'll organise a raffle, give the money to charity, it'll be a great way to celebrate something Dick and your Dad shared'," Ken Henfry says.

"And I thought, 'Oh no, that's not going to happen.'"

He laughs now to think of a couple of strangers playing footy in the park, as he and his Dad had done, blisfully unaware of the treasure on their backs.

Memorabilia expert Rick Milne says that when it comes to Australian football collectibles, "it's (John) Coleman, then daylight, then (Jack) Dyer, then Reynolds". He estimates a jumper worn by Reynolds in a grand final would fetch $10,000. "Absolute minimum. On a good day 20," Milne says.

Milne says such stories aren't uncommon, but reckons this one is "a pearler". Hoping to make Ken Henfry feel better, he recalls rugby league "king" Wally Lewis wearing his very first jumper, from his early days at the Valleys in Brisbane, while painting the house. "It had holes in it, paint all over it."

Ken Henfry isn't groaning, "what if?", although his daughter wondered on Wednesday night if someone might have been sitting at home watching on television and thinking, "That guernsey I got a few years ago at the charity shop ..."

The Henfrys had been expecting a lower-key affair than the Hall Of Fame gala, and were touched to see Ern acknowledged in such company. Before returning to Perth they will go to Friday night's Geelong game hoping for a happy outing, and know how special the Blues were to Ern, who died in 2007 aged 85.

Attending a function at Princes Park in the late 1960s, Ken realised how revered his father was. "John Nicholls came up and said how much he'd admired Ern and loved watching him play when he was a child. That really did mean something to me, that one of the absolute legends of the sport idolised him."